In early 2017 virtual reality (VR) startup Nullspace VR launched a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign for an upper body haptic device called the Hardlight Suit. The campaign proved to be successful and with the first suits beginning to rollout to backers the company has announced a major price reduction.
During the campaign the Hardlight Suit was available for $499 USD as an early bird offer then $549 USD after that. Once the Kickstarter had ended the regular price for the Hardlight Suit became $630 for consumers and and $1,100 for commercial users. Not exactly cheap when you consider the expense of VR in the first place, so now the company has reduced that cost of both versions.
So the standard Hardlight Suit will be retail for $299.00 while the Hardlight Suit: Enterprise Edition will cost exactly the same just with an additional license fee for commercial entities of $9.99 per month (or $99.99 for one year).
Explaining the reason for the price change, CEO Lucian Copeland said in a statement: “Making the suit more approachable from a price standpoint has always been a long-term goal of ours. We were able to reach the production milestones that made this possible earlier than expected, and we’re enthusiastic about the opportunity to introduce haptics to a much wider audience with this new pricing.”
“One of our paramount goals is to keep the Hardlight Suit strong well into the future,” adds Hardlight’s Founder Morgan Sinko. “As eager as we are to get the suits out to people, we know all this effort would be wasted if we couldn’t deliver what we intended: a robust, superior quality haptic suit with a long lifespan. That’s why we’re putting so much effort into making the Hardlight Suit as accessible and robust a platform as possible, and a lower price point will help those efforts immensely.”
Initially conceived by students and members of the University of Rochester’s Robotics Club, the Hardlight Suit features 16 haptic feedback zones aimed at targeting every muscle group across a players chest, abdomen, shoulders, or arms, whilst using inertial trackers to track the limbs relative to the users headset.
As more products come to market that make VR even more immersive, VRFocus will keep you updated.
via Mint VR